Chris Howie schrieb:
On Feb 5, 2008 7:57 AM, Ben Yates ben.louis.yates@gmail.com wrote:
That's a reasonable fear. But I'm convinced there has to be a way to assure the less extremist among the petitioners that Wikipedia is not *deliberately* trying to piss them off. I think a little bit will go a long way.
Two problems with this:
- We are not trying to pacify people, we are trying to write an
encyclopedia. To that extent what people think of us is their problem.
I disagree, because I do care what people think of us.
- We do not censor ourselves. This includes opt-in/out mechanisms
that are censorship bearing the form of a reasonable compromise. There is a reason we did not go this direction for spoiler templates, specifically because it would lead to doing exactly what we are discussing right now.
The reason we did not go for spoiler templates is because it would lead to a reasonable compromise? It seems to me, that you actually want Muslims to see an image of their prophet, which seems to be a ridiculous effort.
There are plenty of things I'm offended by on Wikipedia. But you know what? I've learned to stay away from them.
Why do you want the majority of Muslims to stay away from the Muhammad article? What is the encyclopedic value of such an image? Are there any authentic images of Muhammad?
I've learned that we're trying to do something useful here and that the presence of offensive material does not mean that someone is trying to offend me. If we start giving in to demands like this then we obviously do not care about writing a neutral encyclopedia, we do not care about topic coverage, and we sure as hell do not care if people walk all over us.
If we don't, we do indeed *deliberately* try to piss off religious readers and editors. Islam is btw not the only religion (see [[Aniconism in the Bahá'í Faith]]).
I don't see how respecting religious believes without censoring any content (I don't consider the need to click a link "censorship"), would be derogatory to topic coverage. To the contrary I am convinced, that policies inviting people of different faith would result in broader coverage and a more neutral encyclopedia. There is no way, that religious topics would be as throughly covered by only atheistic or agnostic editors.
WP:NPOV, WP:NOTCENSORED. I know that policy follows actions, etc, but out of curiosity: is there any policy, guideline, or essay that supports what is being suggested here?
WP:NPA "Insulting or disparaging an editor is a personal attack regardless of the manner in which it is done."
WP:PROFANITY "Including information about offensive material is part of Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."